Barbelith Underground > Laboratory > Richard Milton's Alternative Science

I finally found the guy who wrote the book knocking orthodox Darwinism from a non-creationist standpoint (if anyone remembers that topic in Switchboard).

His name is Richard Milton, and he's a regular gadfly. Dig his home page, "Alternative Science", where he covers everything from cold fusion to using ESP to win the lottery....

"What is Alternative Science" excerpt:
But if the evidence shows that many scientists are unwilling to be persuaded by experimental evidence, then how are new discoveries ever accepted by science? One answer is that of Nobel prize winner and physicist Max Planck, who said, 'A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.'

The 'alternative' of my title refers not to some new kind of science, hitherto undiscovered: it refers to a scientific attitude that is the opposite of closed: an approach that is willing to confront anomalous and disturbing data, even when that evidence is deeply traumatic to our settled world view.

Alternative science, open science, is the science of Newton, Einstein and Dirac -- it just hasn't had time to become respectable yet.

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"Impossible" excerpt: When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone he also made a remarkable leap of imagination. He correctly foresaw how people would use his invention; that they would speak on the phone instead of writing a letter -- an early form of electronic mail.

Keen to sell his invention, Bell approached the Post Offices and commercial organisations responsible for carrying mail. The U.S. Post Office turned him down, as did Western Union. Then he approached the British Post Office, whose Chief Engineer, Sir William Preece was one of Britain's most distinguished scientists.

Preece was a Fellow of the Royal Society who had studied under the great Michael Faraday himself. Preece examined Bell's invention, but he, too, rejected it on the grounds that, "England has plenty of small boys to run messages."

Preece later surpassed even this judgment. When told that Thomas Edison was researching an incandescent electric lamp with a high-resistance filament, Preece described it as "A completely idiotic idea."

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"Darwinism" excerpt: One unique and honourable exception was NBC's decision in 1996 to broadcast the film Mysterious Origins of Man, made by Emmy-award winning director Bill Cote, in which independent investigators had a rare opportunity to present anomalous evidence of historical geology, and mankind's past, so that viewers could evaluate this alternative evidence for themselves.

The program proved immensely popular with many viewers, attracting audiences of around 20 million on each of the two occasions when it was shown. The producers also received dozens of abusive responses, which included virtually no attempts to rebut the scientific issues raised but took the consensus position that students and the public should not be given access to such contradictory evidence.

They included terms such as; 'horrible'; 'atrocious'; 'garbage'; 'anti-intellectual trash'; 'evil'; 'deliberate, fraudulent misinformation'; 'claptrap'; 'utter rubbish'; 'nonsense'; A bunch of hooey; 'unadulterated hogwash'; 'bullshit'; 'A piece of junk'; 'crap'; 'shame on you, liars and opportunists', and "Frankly, you are either morons or liars."

You might imagine that these remarks came from the keyboards of pharmaceutically-challenged undergraduates or semiliterate teenagers. In fact they are the words of senior scientists and academics (including several professors) from Yale, University of California at Berkeley, State University of New York, University of Texas at Austin, Wisconsin, New Mexico State, Colorado, Northwestern, and other universities.

Two such academics were so upset by the broadcast they injudiciously let the cat out of the bag completely:

"Thanks largely to the efforts of people like yourself, the American public is generally not capable of evaluating the "arguments" and "evidence" you present." fulminated one.

Another was even more candid. "You should be banned from the airwaves."

Here the programme's critics finally came out into the open: The American people are incapable of evaluating scientific arguments and evidence for themselves. Consequently, people who provide evidence or arguments that contradict the accepted view should be banned from broadcasting.

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"Paranormal" excerpt: Q. How come every single famous 'psychic' was eventually unmasked as a phony?

A. It's true to say that there always have been and always will be phonies and charlatans claiming psychic powers either for profit or for notoriety.

But it's wrong to say that every psychic has been exposed as fraudulent. Quite apart from famous names like Uri Geller, there are dozens of individuals all over the world who have repeatedly performed paranormal feats in controlled conditions.

In England there are Nicholas Williams, Stephen North, Julie Knowles and a number of juveniles who remain anonymous such as Andrew G. In France there is Jean-Pierre Girard. In Japan there is Masuaki Kiyota and in Russia there are numerous individuals, the best known of which is Nina Kulagina.

Working with English metal benders, John Hasted, professor of experimental physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, has devised extensive methods of guarding against conscious or unconscious fraud. He has for example implanted microscopic strain gauges in metal specimens linked electrically to a chart recorder to provide a record of the forces imposed on the specimen. He has recorded many instances of stresses being registered simultaneously from three or more gauges, and extensive deformation of the specimen, under circumstances that rule out fraud. In one famous case, a large piece of aluminium was twisted out of shape by Andrew G., a 12-year old boy, from a distance of 30 feet.

Doctors Charles Crussard and Jean Bouvaist in France have recorded metal bending by Jean-Pierre Girard in glass tubes that have been completely sealed under conditions that have been examined by Hasted and others. Working under the auspices of a French commercial metals company, the investigators have gone to enormous lengths to ensure the effects they are examining were produced paranormally and not by normal methods.

For example each metal sample was hallmarked so it could not be substituted, and all its dimensions measured accurately before and after bending. The hardness of the metal was tested before and after and the crystalline structure of the metal examined by taking 'residual strain profiles'. The structure was also examined under the electron microscope and micro photographs taken. In addition the chemical composition of the metal was examined before and after.

These observations revealed a number of structural anomalies such as a local hardening of the kind produced by compression forces of many tons, but apparently originating internally.

Hasted has adopted similar rigorous precautions to rule out fraud. For example he and the French researchers have been able to get subjects to bend metal rods that it is beyond the strength of any normal person to bend. Crussard has videotaped Jean-Pierre Girard bending a metal rod by gently stroking it, yet producing a bend that requires some three times the strength of a normal person.

Hasted has also reported the phenomenon of a metal-bender turning part of a spoon 'as soft as chewing gum' merely by stroking but under closely controlled conditions that enabled the plastic deformation to be verified by Hasted himself and where the chemical composition and weight of the spoon was examined before and after. It is possible to soften a metal spoon chemically but only by causing a corrosion that would leave a number of alteration such as weight loss, and no such changes were detected.

The usual response to such experiments is "How come scientists have discounted them? They must have been frauds musn't they?"

What has tended to happen in the past two decades, especially since CSICOP has been on the case, is that if anyone claiming psychic powers shows any signs of gaining scientific credibility, then a concerted attempt is made to ridicule and publicly debunk that person, showing how he or she "could have" faked their results. These "explanations" are usually preposterously contorted exercises but as long as the mud sticks they serve their purpose. Thereafter the "skeptics" can always claim "so and so was caught cheating and exposed long ago".

No-one ever bothers to check the real facts and most people dimly recall the public notoriety that the "skeptics" achieved simply by making accusations of fraud.

From the New York Times, 30 April 02, by Case Western University physics dept. head Lawrence Krauss:

Odds Are Stacked When Science Tries to Debate Pseudoscience
By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
I vividly remember the first time I was hijacked on the radio. I had agreed to participate in a debate for a Florida radio program that specialized in alien visits and U.F.O. sightings. My better judgment suggested that I should be wary. But I thought if I kept my focus purely on the physics challenges involved in space travel, I might be able to persuade some listeners to be skeptical of the claims that aliens were regularly visiting, abducting and experimenting with our fellow earthlings.

I should have known better. After 45 minutes defending myself against the claim that I was close-minded, when I argued that science did in fact impose constraints on what is possible, and politely responding to demands that I must first scrupulously review all the specific claims of alien sightings before I could possibly have the temerity to make general statements about plausibility or implausibility, I felt that any uninformed listeners who might have been waiting to be swayed probably found themselves merely confused at the end of the show.

In a debate that confronts the results of science with pseudoscience, from alien abductions and crop circles on one hand to the health benefits of weak magnetic fields or young earth creationism on the other, the odds are stacked against science.

Part of the problem is uniquely American. We in the United States are constantly regaled by stories about the limitless possibilities open to those with know-how and a spirit of enterprise. Combine that with a public that perceives the limits of science as targets that are constantly being overcome, and the suggestion that anything is absolutely impossible seems like an affront. Indeed, modern technology has made the seemingly impossible almost ordinary. How often have I heard the cry from an audience, "Yeah, but 300 years ago people would have said it would be impossible to fly!"

Although true, the problem with that assertion is that 300 years ago people did not know enough about the laws of physics to make the assertion, so the claim would have been improper. Had they made a simpler claim like, "Three hundred years from now, if you drop this cannonball off the Tower of Pisa, it will fall down," they would have been right.

Although it is probably true that there is far more that we do not know about nature than that we do know, we do know something! We know that balls, when dropped, fall down. We do know that the earth is round and not flat. We do know how electromagnetism works, and we do know that the earth is billions of years old, not thousands.

We may not know how spacecraft of the future will be propelled, whether matter-antimatter drives will be built or even if time travel is possible. But we do know, absolutely, how much on-board fuel will be needed to speed up a substantial spacecraft to near the speed of light — an enormous amount, probably enough to power all of human civilization at the present time for perhaps a decade.

That means that aliens who want to come here from a distant star will probably have to have some better reason than merely performing secret kinky experiments on the patients of a Harvard psychiatrist.

As difficult as debating ultimate limits of the possible may be, there is another debate that is even harder to win. But it is a debate that may be even more important. It is a debate on the "fairness" of science. The reason for the difficulty is simple. Science is not fair. All ideas are not treated equally. Only those that have satisfied the test of experiment or can be tested by experiment have any currency. Beautiful ideas, elegant ideas and even sacrosanct notions are not immune from termination by the chilling knife edge of experimental data.

In Ohio, a debate is raging over whether to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution in high school biology classes. Intelligent design is based on the belief that life is too complicated to explain by natural causes alone and that some intelligence, ultimately some divine intelligence, must have created the original life forms on earth or guided their development.

Proponents of that idea suggest that including it in the curriculum is simply a question of fairness. If a significant number of people do not believe that evolution provides an adequate explanation of the origin of species, they argue, then it is only fair to present both sides of the argument in a high school science class.

But at least half of Americans polled in a recent survey by the National Science Foundation did not know that Earth orbits the Sun, and that it takes a year to do so. Does this mean we should teach that Earth is the center of the universe? Of course not. It merely means that we are not doing a very good job informing the public about physics.

Science is not a democratic process. It does not proceed by majority rule and it does not accept notions that have already been disproven by experiment.

Intelligent design makes assertions that cannot be tested by experiment. Those assertions that can be tested, say about blood clotting or the claimed irreducible complexity of various components of cells, seem to have thus far failed those tests. So intelligent design does not belong in a science class. End of story.

Nevertheless, recently the Ohio State School Board felt it necessary to run a hearing on evolution vs. intelligent design in a debate format, with two proponents of evolution to face off against two advocates of intelligent design in Columbus.

One might think that I would know better than to agree to participate in such a debate. But I did, because I felt the education of schoolchildren in Ohio was so important.

Nevertheless, I tried to learn from my earlier mistakes. Merely having a debate inevitably suggests that each side has some credibility. As a result, opponents of the scientific method like creationists try very hard to appear in debates with scientists. Merely being on the same stage represents a victory!

I made sure that I emphasized this intrinsic inequity in my opening remarks in Columbus, and it colored much of the subsequent discussion, as well as the later reporting of the event. I do not know whether it was sufficient to let listeners focus on whether there was really anything worth debating in the first place. But it at least allowed for that possibility.

In the meantime, for those scientists who find themselves thrust in such public debates, I have found at least one useful tool. When debating U.F.O. experts, ask them whether they believe in "Young Earth Creationism." When debating young earth creationists, ask them whether they believe in alien U.F.O.'s. When they say no, ask why. Their answers will inevitably shed light on the weakness of their own positions.

Of course, as has once happened to me, you might find yourself debating a U.F.O.-believing creationist. But you can't win them all. My hope is that you can win at least some of the time.

I would point out that Krauss is presuming UFO "aliens" are coming from distant star systems using something like conventional modes of transport (engines propelling bodies through space) rather than popping in from other dimensions, or using "wormholes" or some other way to get from point A to point B, or rocketing in from somewhere really nearby. But then I would, since the article was forwarded to me by a ufo researcher.
However, he does seem open to the greatest advantage of real science: the ability to say "we just don't know."